Olive turned to her daughter. ‘Yes, Tilly.’ She felt her bed depress under Tilly’s weight.
‘I’m sorry about what I said earlier, and about what I was going to do. It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have done.’
The wretchedness in Tilly’s voice tore at Olive’s heart. Sitting up in bed, she reached for her daughter and put her arms round her, her cheek resting on Tilly’s downbent head.
‘I’m sorry too, Tilly. Sorry that I haven’t treated you, trusted you, as I should.’
Her mother’s apology made Tilly feel even worse. Turning, she flung her arms round Olive and told her fiercely, ‘You don’t have anything to feel sorry for. It was me who . . . who lied.’
Stroking her hair back from Tilly’s forehead, Olive told her sadly, ‘I’ve been selfish, Tilly, trying to keep you as a little girl, when you aren’t. I never wanted to stop you having fun, I just wanted to protect you. War makes people anxious to take what happiness they can, Tilly, when they can, especially the young. When we think someone we care for might be snatched from us, and with them our future happiness, it makes us all do things and take risks we wouldn’t normally take. For young people that often means falling in love, being hurt.’
‘I just wanted to go out dancing, but you’re afraid that I might meet someone and fall in love and that they might be killed and then . . . I’d be like you were when Dad died. Oh, Mum . . .’
They held each other tightly.
‘Sally has offered to go with you and Agnes to the Palais, just to help you find your feet there the first time you go.’
‘You mean . . .’ Tilly swallowed hard. This generosity on the part of her mother was too much for her to bear. Fresh tears fell.
‘You’ll have to take care of Agnes, Tilly. She isn’t as used to thinking for herself as you are.’
‘Can I stay here with you tonight?’ Tilly asked.
Olive smiled in the darkness and drew back the bedcovers.
They were almost the last to leave the Palais and now, in the foggy darkness outside the dancehall, they stood facing one another on the pavement.
‘Next time,’ David told Dulcie, ‘I’ll take you somewhere a bit more exciting than this.’
So there was going to be a next time. A thrill of pleasure surged through Dulcie; not that she was going to let him see how she felt. Instead she demanded, ‘Who says there’s going to be a next time?’
‘Not who but what,’ David answered, ‘and this is what says there will be.’
When he cupped her face in both his hands and gently drew his thumbs along her cheekbones, gazing down into her eyes as he did so, Dulcie could only gaze back at him. She’d been kissed before but never like this, like she’d seen people kissing in films, and no cheeky fumbling with her clothes either. David was a true gentleman. And awfully good at kissing. The only thing that could make right now any better would be being able to boast to Lizzie about it, but of course she could never do that.
‘There’ll be no seeing me again after you get married to Lydia,’ Dulcie felt bound to warn him, but David merely laughed.
‘Giving Lydia a wedding ring isn’t going to stop me enjoying life, Dulcie.’
Deep down inside, Dulcie felt unexpectedly shocked. She knew that David didn’t love Lydia, but to hear him speak so casually and uncaring made her wonder how serious he could ever be about any girl.
‘It might not stop you enjoying life, but it will stop me from going out with you,’ Dulcie insisted.
David was frowning now. ‘If you’re trying to persuade me not to marry Lydia, then I should tell you—’
‘I’m not trying to persuade you to do anything,’ Dulcie defended herself heatedly, not letting him finish. ‘What I’m doing is telling you that I won’t cheapen myself by providing a bit of fun for a married man. I think more of myself than to do that, even if you don’t.’
David looked crestfallen. ‘I’m sorry, Dulcie,’ he said immediately. ‘I didn’t mean . . . That is, you know how it is with me and Lydia. She doesn’t want me, she just wants who I am. You and I, we’re two of a kind, I know it.’
‘We aren’t two of anything, and we aren’t going to be.’
She meant it, David could see, and part of him admired her for her determination, even whilst most of him wished that she was more malleable. He might not have spent much time with her, but there was a quality about Dulcie that touched something in him that Lydia would never be able to reach. Perhaps it was a trait he had inherited from his Gaiety Girl grandmother that made him feel so at home with Dulcie, and if things had been different . . . But his parents, and especially his mother, would never accept Dulcie. And it was through his mother that ultimately he would inherit his wealth, just as it was his mother who was insisting on him marrying Lydia. David gave a brief inner shrug. Dulcie was a pretty girl but London was full of pretty girls. It wasn’t in his nature to fight for what he wanted; it was easier instead to want something else, and more within reach, so he gave Dulcie another smile, and nodded in acceptance of Dulcie’s decree before telling her, ‘I’ll get us a taxi,’ and then stepping out into the road.
Almost by magic a taxi materialised through the fog, and within seconds David was helping her into it, whilst Dulcie battled against the dangerous temptation to wish that she hadn’t closed the door quite so firmly on she and David getting together again.
She wasn’t in any danger of falling for him, Dulcie assured herself as she let herself into number 13 – she’d made David tell the taxi to stop at the entrance to the Row because she didn’t want Olive to hear the taxi and look out of her window to see what was going on – she wasn’t that daft, or that soft. And she’d meant what she said about not seeing him again.
When she reached the top landing she saw that the door to Sally’s room was open, a narrow oblong of light thrown by the bedside lamp. Then Sally appeared in the open doorway, wearing her dressing gown.
‘I just thought I’d warn you that Olive caught Tilly and Agnes trying to sneak out earlier this evening,’ she told her quietly
‘So what if she did?’ Dulcie hissed back. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me what Tilly does.’
‘Except that you encouraged her. Olive was very upset, Dulcie. It wasn’t a very nice thing to do. Olive is a decent sort and this is a good billet.’
‘Look, it’s not my fault if Tilly wants to go dancing. Serves Olive right, if you ask me, the way she carries on, fussing over that Agnes and treating me as though I’m something the cat brought in.’
Sally gave a small sigh. She’d only stayed up to warn Dulcie, thinking that the other girl might want to prepare an apology for Olive, but far from being remorseful Dulcie seemed to relish the trouble she had caused.
Chapter Fourteen
Tilly thought she was the happiest she had ever been – at least, she would have been were it not for the war. The new grown-up status now conferred on her by her mother meant that Tilly now felt she had to take her adulthood very seriously. That meant that whilst, of course, she was excited at the thought of going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais, she must also think about the war and all those who were involved in it.
Mr Salt, who was in charge of their St John Ambulance brigade had actually praised her at their last meeting for the attention she’d paid to his lecture about the correct way to use a stirrup pump, in case they were called upon to deal with any incendiary bombs.
It was Sally now whom Tilly admired and looked up to rather than Dulcie, although she had begged her mother not to say anything to Dulcie.
Reluctantly Olive had refrained